To Encourage You

Hebrews 13:12-13 “So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured.”

What separates Christians from the rest of the world? What makes them so different? Why have they been rejected and persecuted by so many, even up to this present day?  We get an indication of this when we look at what Jesus, the one that believers follow, said about Himself: “The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil” (John 7:7).  You see, many people look at the world and see evil, but the evil is something “out there,” something that is outside of them.  Many unbelievers are consumed with what they see as “righteous” causes. Read social media.  It’s everywhere – people condemning other people because they aren’t as outraged as THEY are about things that are wrong in the world.  Of course, we’re all like this to some degree. We all have our concerns and exhibit “righteous indignation” about what’s going on “out there.”

So what makes a Christian any different?  Is it that they think they’re somehow better than everyone else, and that their “righteous indignation” is better than everyone else’s?  It’s to this that the passage above from Hebrews 13 speaks. It points to the fact that Jesus was utterly and totally rejected by the Jews and Romans alike. They crucified him “outside the gate,” i.e., outside Jerusalem, this holy place which God chose for His temple to dwell.  It was the self-righteous Jews that condemned Jesus to death, and the self-righteous Romans who carried out their wishes. It was in His manner of death that we see just one of the ways that the prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled, in that “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted withgrief; and as one from whom men hide their faceshe was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3).  But it is believers, and only believers, that acknowledge, again from Isaiah, that “he was pierced for OUR transgressions; he was crushed for OUR iniquities” (Isaiah 53:5). In other words, it is believers who join Him “outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured.” And why do we do this? Because we acknowledge that it was for OUR sins that he suffered and died. It is because WE have been what’s wrong with the world. It’s not something or someone “out there.” 

The believer confesses that he or she is a sinner.  It’s the only way anyone can be saved.  It’s only for the ones who acknowledge their own sickness that the Great Physician can come with healing in His wings (Mark 2:17; Malachi 4:2).  It is in this acknowledgement of sin that a believer is rejected by the world, for it’s the self-righteous world that rejects Christ and His followers, not the other way around. 

Jesus talked about this separation in the following words from His prayer recorded in John 17:” Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” He was talking about the truth of the gospel – that truth that we all, every one of us, are sinners, and that the only way to be saved is to acknowledge that fact and turn to the only one Who is truly righteous and Who is the only one Who can eternally forgive our sin.  But that’s the message that the world hates – the truth that exposes their sin. And it’s that acknowledgement that separates sinners from saints, for the saints have taken their sin “outside the gate.”

So what about you? Are you doing all you can to demonstrate that you’re a good person, and better than those “out there,” or are you one who confesses that the problems of this world are inside of you? Have you confessed that the problem in the world is the sin that resides in your own heart?  That’s the truth that separates. It’s the truth that will send you outside the gate to the precious Son of God Who suffered and died there, rejected by men for the salvation of the world.